Free The Cove by Rick Hautala Page A

still going on in The Local at full-bore.
    Damn, it’s good to be alive, Ben thought, and once again — as they had all night — thoughts of Julia Meadows popped into his head.
    “God damn, ” he whispered.
    She was the reason he was feeling so good. He squared his shoulders and scanned the narrow strip of trail leading down to and then around the harbor. Out of the shadows, the dirt path glowed dull silver in the faint wash of moonlight. If he wasn’t quite so drunk, he thought, when he got home, he should get his car and drive over to Julia’s place to see if she was still awake and if she felt like doing something.
    “Doing something …” Ben said, chuckling as he shook his head. There was no doubt what he meant by “ doing something.”
    He walked a little further down the alley, but before he stepped out of its shadows, a sudden urgency in his bladder made him stop. Stepping off the path onto some rough ground, he unzipped his pants and started to piss against one of the barnacle-encrusted wooden pilings that supported the harbor-side end of The Local. His urine steamed in the cool night air as it splattered against the wood and ran in a foamy current onto the ground. By the time he realized he was pissing uphill, it was too late. Urine ran down the slope and onto his sneakers. He tried to sidestep the stream but lost his balance and almost fell.
    When he was finished, he shook himself off and zipped his pants up. As he was turning around, he sensed more than saw a blur of motion in the shadows behind him.
    “Hey, wha’zup — ” he said once he realized a person was coming down the alleyway toward him.
    With the glow of streetlights behind him, the figure was indistinct. All Ben was sure of was that it was a man. Before he could react, the figure, instead of walking past him, lunged at him. Strong hands reached out of the darkness and grabbed him by the shoulders. Ben grunted with surprise as he was spun around. Drunk as he was, the motion felt like it kept going even after he had stopped.
    “What the fuck —?” Ben said, his voice slurred. A bubble of gas rose from his stomach into his throat, leaving behind a terrible taste.
    The person didn’t say a word. He shoved Ben face-first against one of the pilings. His nose banged against the wood hard enough to stagger him, and tiny white stars splashed across his vision. Pain shot through his head like a sudden jolt of electricity.
    “Leave her the fuck alone,” the man said, his voice a low, animal-like growl. “You understand?”
    Too dazed to react, Ben locked his knees, hoping they wouldn’t buckle underneath him. He had the sense that — whoever this was — he was purposely disguising his voice so he wouldn’t recognize it. All Ben saw was a silhouette, cut out sharply against the night sky.
    Ben clenched his hands into fists and was preparing to wheel around and take a swing at his assailant, but before he could do that, something hard — a fist or something even harder, maybe a baseball bat — slammed into the back of his head.
    Darkness spread across Ben’s vision like a black wave crashing against the shore and shooting high into the sky. His knees went rubbery, and he would have dropped if he hadn’t grabbed onto one of the pilings in front of him. When he started to slide down, his legs giving out, barnacles sliced into the palms of his hands, making him yowl.
    He sucked in a breath and tried to speak, but the only sound he made sounded like he had thrown up into his mouth and was gargling with it.
    “Julia Meadows!” the voice said, rolling like a rumble of thunder in the darkness. “You stay the fuck away from her, or next time — I’ll...I’ll fucking kill you!”
    Ben was still too dazed to react. A high-pitched ringing sound filled his head. When he started to turn around again, something hard rocketed out of the darkness and caught him on the left cheek, snapping his head back. The vertebrae in his neck crackled and